Search Engine Optimisation

Now lets face it Yahoo isn’t that big of a deal really…we all know shares plummeted and the company didn’t make much money. Right now lets look a little deeper into this… Yahoo made plenty of money through its Paid-Ads … but not enough. They never truly made PPC pay for them, nor any of their other ventures, geocities closed last year and yahoo games seems to be unable to hold its ground with the likes of Facebook Applications on the seen. The money they have generated over the past few years haven’t paid the bills and salaries of the company… so why on earth would Microsoft want to buy them?

Well here is the answer:

In 2002 Yahoo acquired Overture… a leading paid-internet-advert company… thier 2002 annual report reads:

Overture Services, Inc. is the global leader in Pay-For-Performance search (also known as paid search) on the Internet. Overture’s search service is comprised of advertiser’s listings, which are screened for relevance and accessed by consumers and businesses through Overture’s affiliates, a network of Web properties that have integrated Overture’s search service into their sites or that direct user traffic to Overture’s own site. In some cases, consumers and businesses access our search listings directly at our site. The search listings are ranked by the advertisers’ bid; the higher the bid, the higher the ranking. Advertisers pay Overture the bid price for clicks on the advertisers’ search listing (also known as a paid introduction, click-through or a paid click).

Sounds alot like Google Adwords doesn’t it… and it is. Google is generally credited with the creation of these services and pioneering the technology behind it…quite correctly too. However Overture was the first company to realise the niche and further to this they even managed to patent certain principles behind Paid Advert Placements (PPC), this was granted in 2001 by the US Patent office. The ’361 patent effectively granted Overture the right to monopolize the lucrative US paid-search market and subsequently dictated the evolution of the global paid-search market.

After getting the ’361 patent, Overture wasted no time going after its paid-search competitors and quickly mobilised its lawyers to corner the paid-search market. Initially, Microsoft, Yahoo, and most of the other paid search players chose to license the ’361 patent. However, Google and Miva (a small paid search operator formerly known as FindWhat) chose to challenge the patent in court. In doing subsequently Overture sued them for Patent Infringement.

The challenge of the ’361 patent made a lot of sense as Overture was demanding hefty fees for the patent’s use. Overture’s financial statements from 2002 indicate that the company on average retained 38 percent of ad revenue generated by its paid search ads at customer websites. Microsoft and Yahoo were two of Overture’s biggest customers in 2002 and were responsible for 60 percent of Overture’s revenue that year.

Overture reported a huge growth in 2002, so they began to look for a suitable buyer. With Googles growth enormous in the PPC industry and the anticipation of Yahoo & Microsoft surpassing overture in rolling out their own PPC solutions like Google. Overture did own ’361 patent and could use it to block Yahoo and Microsoft but the patent was being challenged in court. Any setback in court would have destroyed Overture, and on account of the questions surrounding the ’361 patent filing, the company had good reasons to expect a less than favorable outcome in court.

Overture initally began with marketing itself to Microsoft, however Bill Gates hugely miscalculated the worth of overture and the need for the Patent they held. Bill Gates rejected the deal out of hand on the basis it was patent play and they couldn’t enforce the ’361 patent on grounds of anti trust … they couldnt afford the court battles it may cause. With Microsoft no longer in the picture Overture was in essence driven to Yahoo and they ahd no worries about snapping up Overture. It wasn’t long before they enforced the patent after the purchase in 2003 for around $1.3billion. The purchase price amounted to more than 8.5 percent of Yahoo’s valuation at that time, though yahoo considered this a snip at half the price for controlling the PPC industry.

Yahoo’s Overture acquisition completely cornered Microsoft in the paid-search market. Microsoft had been licensing the ’361 patent and in doing so it had admitted to the patent being valid. Microsoft could still challenge the patent in court but it did not have a good case. Yahoo now effectively dictated what Microsoft could and could not do in the paid-search market. Microsoft’s only hope was the challenge to the ’361 patent by Google and Miva.

Unsuprissingly the outcome of the court proceedings wasn’t in the favour of Microsoft. In a rather mysterious and shady deal Google chose to settle with Yahoo. Google claimed to have won royalty free use of Yahoo’s paid search patents for around $300 million in stock… though Googles official figures seem to show only $30 million was spent on the settlement. The remainder was considered (probably for accounting reasons) as compensation to yahoo for its trouble.

Miva, the other ’361 patent litigant, persisted with the litigation, and the case eventually went to trial in April 2005. In May 2005, the case resulted in a mistrial after a jury failed to reach a verdict. It was found 6 claims made my Miva were invalid during the trail, the jury was indecissive. Judge Cormac was in a position to dismiss the major claims of ’361 patent, and there were reports in the media that he was inclined to do just that. Additionally, Judge Cormac was reported as favoring Miva in the inequitable conduct dispute about the ’361 patent. Yahoo could have appealed an unfavorable ruling but such a ruling would have been a massive setback nevertheless.

With the prospect of more court proceedings Miva and Yahoo also settled out of court. Miva ended up paying Yahoo $8 million in cash and undisclosed royalties. Again, inexplicably, Yahoo insisted on getting royalties from a marginal player when it allowed Google to use the ’361 patent royalty free.

The Miva settlement is all the more interesting because it directly contradicts Google’s claims of having settled with Yahoo for $300 million in stock with no ongoing royalties. (The settlement amounted to roughly $30 million according to Google’s own financial statements.) Both companies’ business models depended on having access to ’361 patent, but Miva’s was less dependent on account of its having acquired paid-search assets overseas where the ’361 patent could not be enforced. More importantly, Miva settled from a position of strength as Yahoo could not afford to have major claims of the ’361 patent dismissed, but Google settled from a position of weakness as its IPO was at stake when it settled. Even ignoring the massive competitive threat Google posed to Yahoo, Google’s settlement should have been at least two orders of magnitude bigger than Miva’s on account of Google’s size, growth potential, and weak bargaining position.

Microsoft’s subsequent experience with its adCenter paid-search product outlines just how extreme and damaging Yahoo’s control over paid-search became. Microsoft began with roll outs in france and singapore followed by the UK in June 2006 … it was not available at this point in the US. Microsoft attempted to pay $1 billion in cash for access to the yahoo owned patent. However Microsoft wanted some very specific terms, it came as no suprise when this was rejected by Yahoo. The money Microsoft offered may have been good in the short-term but it was questionable if Yahoo could have stayed independent after losing its search assets. However Yahoo arranged a better deal with Google who now co-owned yahoo’s search assets and also helped improve the ROI of yahoo paid search.

Surprisingly, Microsoft instead of proposing a more competitive deal has been busy trying to subvert the Yahoo Google deal by raising antitrust concerns, and even seems to have succeeded at getting the US courts to investigate this deal… the deal was delayed until the investigation was complete however.

Microsoft was completely aware of the ludicrousness of its attempts to buy Yahoo’s paid-search assets and Microsoft’s earlier acquisition bid seems to have been an attempt to soften up Yahoo’s opposition to a paid-search asset acquisition. Microsoft’s publicized $31 a share bid was preceded by an unpublicized $40 a share bid in January of 2007. The initial $40 bid seems to have conveyed the message that if Yahoo refuses to let Microsoft co-own paid search, it can expect a public bid from Microsoft at some inopportune time. Yahoo responded to the threat by handing over the CEO job to Jerry Yang, a founder and a major shareholder, and attempting to shore up its share price by cost-cutting. Of course, this did not help and eventually Yahoo’s share price fell to a point where Microsoft felt that it could make a safe play for Yahoo’s paid search assets. This opened the door to much trouble and more changes within Yahoo management – as microsoft had wanted. In doing so Microsoft hoped this would force Yahoo into their hands.

There was a further bid to Yahoo by Microsoft Rejected (of a reported near $50billion in january 2008) as Google continued talks with Google… this explains why the deal fell through. Google does have a perpetual royalty-free license, but $30 million was not all Google paid for the license. Evidently, Google is hiding some material terms of its patent settlement with Yahoo from the general public and its investors. Google had a legal obligation to disclose anything material that was likely to influence its future business operations, but Google’s management subverted that obligation. It seems that the terms Google did not disclose were covered by a “grace period” of several years during which Google got free use of the patent, and escape clauses; so back in 2004, Google’s management under pressure of an imminent IPO convinced itself that the terms covered by the grace period were unlikely if ever to come into play even after the grace period ended, and so were immaterial and did not need to be disclosed. The thinking at Google must have been that either the ’361 patent is not going to hold-up in court, or Miva is going to extract a good settlement out of Yahoo triggering escape clauses in the agreement, or somebody else is going to get a good deal out of Yahoo.

The problem for both Yahoo and Google is that Microsoft wants to force itself into the deal. Microsoft knows that it can block any compensation deal between Yahoo and Google by beating up the antitrust drum. Microsoft is using this as leverage to goad Yahoo into selling its paid-search assets. Essentially, Microsoft has conveyed to Yahoo that there can be no payday for Yahoo if Microsoft does not get Yahoo’s paid-search assets, but if Yahoo acts sensibly Microsoft can conveniently look the other way when Google comes knocking with the ransom.

The google “deal” was abandoned by Yahoo and Google over this antiturst threat.

So thats the history and the why… and so to today.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine will power the Yahoo website and Yahoo will in turn become the advertising sales team for Microsoft’s online offering. Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer said the 10-year deal would provide Microsoft’s Bing search engine with the necessary scale to compete. “Through this agreement with Yahoo, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers, and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company”.

In return for ceding control of its search engine, Yahoo will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell adverts on some Microsoft sites.

“This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo, our users, and the industry. And I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of internet innovation and development,” said Ms Bartz (YAHOO CEO)

Read more about todays deal.

Where does this leave SEO and what about this Google access to the patent? … well lets just see over the next few months… If anything happens I will report it here for you.

We’d love to here what you have to say on this deal

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Back to the series of how to Get to number one on Google … and I know somethning of a myth I want to share with you… Using PPC can and will effect your search rankings …

Dispelling the myth: PPC, whether Google Adwords or not, does not and will never effect your search engine ranking results.

So with that sorted I here you ask why am I writing this article… well the answer is quite simple. Since september I’ve put this off, PPC is something that requires a lot of experience to comment on properly. It requires a real in depth knowledge to be able to share the secrets of PPC. I’ve supplied clients with Google Adwords, Yahoo Services and more recently Live Adwords (now bing) over the past few years, i’ve never given away any real information about how it works nor how best to approach Pay Per Click advertising… until today. Today I give you… the 5 SIMPLE steps to PPC Success.

1. Lesson 1 – Learn and refer to the Google Adwords Learning Center … its pretty much the holy grail of Pay Per Click advertising. It will take you through everything you need to know and a little bit more besides.
2. Lesson 2 – Research is paramount to success, this is not just an hour looking at what others are doing, its an on going process that you should eventually be doing subconciously. Much like an SEO will make judgements within seconds of landing on a web page as to whether it is a good page for seo, you should be able to tell when you do a search on google how much its costing, if its successful and more. Look for good, cheap and more so effective keywords that are commonly used and will drive traffic.
3. Lesson 3 – Never run on autopilot… if your silly and want to loose thousands of pounds a day on non-existant traffic… feel free too, if you want to be successful then control everything you can. AP is fine in some smaller cases where the monthly limit is a couple of hundred, with bigger clients this can lead to disaterous results and the client walking away with a 20k hole in thier pocket (he says having just read a few case studies of what not too do!).
4. Lesson 4 – Brand Name bidding is stupid… people know who you are so don’t do it, and don’t do it on someone elses name… its not worth the hassle it can cause. People know who you are, they know your brand name and trust it so stop wasting your money on this futile bid for success.
5. Lesson 5 – Finally, Update Update Update… gradual changes are the major key to success each day or even hour tweek your keywords & bids, find the most effective schedule, keywords and more so those which give you most conversions. (Another error is pulling reports on CTR and not on conversions as you should be doing!) Conversions are the ultimate, without them you are wasting your money
6. Lesson 6 – Yes thats right I lied… just like the majority of people who call you up asking if you would like PPC. Lesson 6 is simple … PPC should ONLY be used in line with good seo, where you are in a HIGHLY competitve market and may struggle to get to number one on google.

So there it is … fairly simple right… well it can be if you get it right or choose the right SEO firm to help you on your way.

Anything else? mmmmm well yes but lets just say giving away too much drives clients away.

Want to ask a question? Leave a Comment Below.

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Ok, now i know right here is meant to be some amazing post about PPC and other off-site factors of SEO but I felt the urge as soon as the proof landed on my lap to show you this!

The Google Android Home Hub

Now forgive me won’t you for not releasing this before, I first heard rumours some months ago, then Android OS was outed… and then today I heard from a source about some further proof… so I have to share.

Scheduled for release later this year, the Android Home Hub is coming. With articles on Forbes.com discussing possibilites of android cars and how android will eventually invade out homes…. amongst other exciting phandroid concepts… I’m happy to announce here it is.

Now I have my issues with the concept of this product as many will but I am assured from an inside source that this is happening… So i am quite excited by this news.

From what I’ve been able to gather from my source the Android Home Hub will interact with:

• Lights
• Locks
• Alarms
• Heating / Air Con
• TV / DVD players / VCR players (sceptical of the later)
• Sound Systems
• Other entertainment systems such as SKY boxes
• Phone Systems (creating full VOIP system implementation around the globe)
• WiFi

The Home Hub

The manufacturer (Touch Revolution) are pretty much unheard of around the globe, just as HTC were unless you were a geek.
“The types of touch interfaces that started with mobile phones will become the standard for electronics devices of all sorts – in the home, at the office, in the car – virtually anywhere people directly interact with technology. These devices will have a variety of capabilities, features, and form factors – WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, accelerometers, haptic feedback, small screens, large screens, integrated, stand-alone, portable, … the list goes on.”
We went on to make our own list of possible household, automotive and other appliances/gadgets/tech where Android could be used and it looks like it will actually get done! The Forbes article claims all devices have touch-screens ranging in size from 4.3 to 10 inches and come with charging cradles.
So when and where can we expect these products?
Expect to see most of the products before the end of the year, in the U.S. and elsewhere. Brown says Touch Revolution is working with “companies with major brands” on upcoming launches. Touch Revolution provides the touch screens and Android features, encapsulated in a module. Its partners then customize the hardware and software, if they choose, and bring the product to market.”

I can’t begin to explain how happy I am to see this product hitting manufacturing with hints that T-Mobile have exclusive rights again (at least in the USA and UK) I am fast getting excited.

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Number one seems to distant? Go for number two surely thats easier to achieve?
Wrong! … Always aim high and you will receive the rewards you deserve!
Number One IS achievable… if your website is built correctly that is.

The Building Blocks

In this post I will be examining what the fundamental building blocks of a successful website (in terms of how it is created) are, now this list can of course be expanded to such a degree you would be required to be a professor to understand it, However… this is the building blocks… and I will keep it a little less than complicated, and hopefully Jargon Free!

• Structure of the site – This is fairly simple to understand, not so easy to implement (in some cases). You should look to create a clear and understandable hierarchy, Where each (and every) page has at least one link from another page on the site. Unless your some kind of magician having a “stand alone” page will do you no good as a search engine won’t find it… nor will other users more to the point! – It may help you to have a set “drawn sitemap” from day one of your ideas conception, this will evolve but the main branches will mean you have some structure.
• Short Urls - Keep your url’s fairly short, forexample you don’t need the whole date in the URL who would ever remember that and the rest of your url? – Most CMS’ provide this functionality.
• Structured of the Page - Now this again is fairly simple… until you put it into practice. Use a “perfect page” structure, and remember to try and keep code Semantic (this means clean and validating code).
• Use the attributes – most “objects” on a page have tags / attributes associated, they are there for a reason, so use them. For example images have the alt attribute (the most important one that you should be using), this is used as an alternative text if the image isn’t viewable for any reason or if the user is using a screen reader, it is very important for user accessibility.
• Create a sitemap – this is basically a directory of your important pages. put it in your main directory and submit it to the search engines. But a word of warning… exceeding 100 links may cause some suspicion … be careful.
• Submit your site – No matter how much I say this to people they never do, they always think that by some magic they will be linked to and search engines will pick them up. They won’t! so submit each and every new URL you have to the search engines – here start with google.
• Content is King – I’ve wrote so many articles on this in the past year or so, so heres a few links for you. The Golden Ratio – Making Copy Pay – SEO Tips – Copy – SEO Tips – Page Content
• Quality Links are Vital – Now if you are involved in running a website you will no doubt have recieved an email or two from companies (usually based in india) who want to “link exchange”, they go on to explain how links are a key part of how search engines rank a site… well yes but its not the whole story as you will have gathered from my previous article “getting to number one on google“. So here is what google looks for in a “good quality” link; Trust (is the linking site trusted by the web), Relevancy (is the link out of place in the content of the page or site), Anchor Text (what text is used to link to you… click here doesnt rub well) and Quantity (the number of links on the page and/or site linking to you… is it a link farm?). Its not worth persuing these links generally…unless you get really lucky and the site has a huge PageRank and when you check it out it is a real site with relevancy to your content!

This is the second in a series of Articles about “getting to number one on google” – today we have focused on what your website should be… next time we look at PPC and other off-site techniques.

If You have ANY questions please leave them below and I will be happy to answer them for you.

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Getting to number one on Google… Thats what you want for your site, or your clients site… your friends site, right? My bet is over 90% of you say “YES!” and with good reason. Lets face it being number one on google is a big advantage… it drives traffic to your site, right?

Wrong! – well mainly you are wrong… being number one on google is fairly easy… for alot of terms! (but that won’t drive any significant traffic to your sites) Being number one on google for higher ranking phrases and words is not so easy. It is these phrases that will will drive traffic to your site.

Now there are any number of Search Engine Optimisation / Marketing companies that claim

We can get your site to the top of Google

But can they really? is what they offer worth the money they ask, or even the time you give them?
In most cases it isn’t, and heres the reason why…

Search Engines are only intterested in a single thing…
Relevancy of Information

Its Simple! If your content isn’t relevant … the search engines will ignore you and so will the users of the internet.

Now of course you can “trick” Google, Bing (formerly MSN Live), Yahoo and other search engines, but in 99.99% of cases these will break the terms of service which these search engines set out for webmasters. Any gain you make from these techniques will be short lived. All search engines will see when they are being “played” by a website (or series of) and are always working to close the loop holes. However these “Black Hat” secrets will mean your site get punished and even banned by the search engines, oh and penalties aren’t always just on a single domain – so beware of black hat technique based companies!

Avoiding the Black Hat Companies

Now there is a lot of advice aorund, so i’ve shortlisted my top 5 Tips on how to avoid the companies that use these “illegal” techniques.

1. Be Sceptical of any company that “gaurentees” a particular position on a search engine, Always ask questions about how this will be achieved and make sure the gaurentee is for your most competitive term(s)… but most of all if at any time they mention using a “secret” technique walk away… take some time to think and ask more questions (consult with another SEO, my email inbox is always open). also find out what happens if they don’t meet the gaurentee.
2. Avoid any company which contacts you “out of the blue” … generally if a company has to do this they don’t have enough clients to fill the day … if they are worth anything they will always be busy and be hiring in accordance with this. The best way to find an SEO company is by word of mouth and/or by reading about their experience (such as this blog).
3. Ask for a broken down qoute – only if the company is hidding something will they say no – if they say no walk away.
4. Search for the company on Google see where they appear… for the domain they use… my bet is if they are black hat they probably wont appear.
5. If the company claims to “automatically” submit sites to XX search engines … immediately walk away… automatic submission breaks TOS.

So with that cleared up… Lets look at things you really shouldn’t be doing on your site…

Avoid These Black Hat Techniques and Get to Number One

Now this list isn’t exhaustive not by any means but it is rather a quick guide to things you should avoid.

• Hidden Text / Links – One of the main ways Google ranks your site is based on the content of the site itself, therefore large amounts of keyword rich content should get you ranked quite well. A black Hat Technique would be to add large amounts of text to a webpage but make it invisible to the user, this is because the text will often not make much sense and make a well designed website look terrible. Text can be hidden by using white text on a white background, using javascript to hide the text and also using cascading style sheets to hide the text.
• Keyword Stuffing – Generally used in combination with the above. This technique is the “art” of cramming as many keywords as possible in your content… be this text or images (the alt attribute). This really doesn’t work not only will the search engines notice immediately but it will lead to a VERY bad user experiece, driving users away from your site.
• Cloacking / Doorway Pages – These are single page sites, built using the above techniques to do nothing but build page rank and link to another website… in doing so driving its search rank. Without going into too much detail, these pages can be created such that users don’t see them, clever javascript, htaccess work and or redirection techniques can be used on users, meaning the content is only viewable by search engine spiders. This technique is easy to spot if you know what your looking for… and search engines do!
• Duplicate Content – This isn’t to say don’t ellaborate on your own content, or another persons…rather simply to say don’t copy it word for word…or anything like this. Think about it… rankings are given by comparing sites… so if a search engine see’s duplicate websites/website content they will query this, if found guilty expect a penalty. (This also means no repeat pages … so no seperate print only pages).
• Automatic Submission – As states before this is against most search engines TOS, don’t use a machine to submit websites… plus the chances are most the engines you submit to will be the same search engine directory.
• Fake Link Building - Another popular Black hat technique where the Black Hatter will build thousands of back links to your site using various techniques, quite often this can be seen using Googles “link:” query too to view the links, if a site is relatively new but has thousands of back links then there is a chance it will be a from Black Hat techniques. Common techniques include: Comment Spamming of blogs, Forum Spamming, Link Farms/Exchanges.

Ok so using these techniques can be profitable until your caught…and you will be caught normally in hours… and therefore it is the black hatters whom are making money here not you! Don’t get tarnished with the same brush RICOH and BMW did in 2006 – they used cloacking and duplicate content – they recieved a full ban!… a few weeks later they had removed these techniques and the ban was lifted (somewhat contriversial move by google to relist with old rankings though).
This is the first in a series of Articles about “getting to number one on google” – today we have focused on what not to do… next time we look at enhancing your website and its rankings, then we will move onto PPC and other off-site techniques.

If You have ANY questions please leave them below and I will be happy to answer them for you.

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Now, if your reading this you are obviously a designer or developer of websites… sorry guys but I maybe about to upset you… but deal with it because all of the below is true!

Internet Explorer 6 will NEVER die… its like that derelict building we all knew when we were a child. We all visited it to see how scary it was… some where scary some really were just an empty room and didn’t scare anyone. But my point is that they must have all stood there for many many years to become the state they were in (and probably still are). A few were eventually re-invented but IE6 will enver be… mainly because it already has been re-established with IE7 … which didn’t really do the job either.

Now, IE6 may never ever behave correctly, it will never run Javascript correctley or load CSS and images in the correct manner… without being very hacky in the coding of the site. However, IE 6 is here to stay! I am sorry but there is no hiding this… Corporations (and smaller companies) will remain using IE6 for a fantastic number of years yet… even though numbers may end up less than 5% in the next few years … I will still be testing in IE6 as should you… we all test (and I use) Google Chrome which is still less than 5% market share… so Test in IE6!

Other than the above why do I believe IE will not disappear?

• Our own business clients still use IE6 on most computers – its only the IT department and Managing Directors (with nice new laptops) that don’t.
• IE7 has been around a while and the stats show most people upgrading do so without really knowing… Upgrades are “high priortit” but not forced … I admit updates to IE7 do exist in SP3 for XP
• IE6 may give ugly results, but surely we have become to decorative and have skipped the functions – these work just fine in IE6.
• IE6 should be tested in always, and used as the final stopping point for website degredation (design for the latest and best but supply for the rest).

Still using IE6 … don’t worry… you maybe safe for now. You can still surf without too much fear. You can still see everything updated browsers do…sure it maybe a little misaligned and you may not get all of our shiny (ajax) stuff, so really don’t worry.

I will still be supporting IE6 for sometime.

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All search engines like to get to know each and every website in various stages.

Stage One is the sandbox, whether you submit a site or you are found by a search engine via a link you will find yourself in the sandbox. The Sandbox is a “holding pen” for new sites, it allows the search engine to look at your site, profile it a little and find if there are a few links floating around. It can take sometime to do so it can take a while for you to get out of the Sandbox. Time scales are from just 14 days to 6 months for some search engines. During this time you shouldn’t expect your site to achieve too much, there won’t be much improvement in ranking if any – but you will find yourself in the search rankings (in most cases). Whilst in the sandbox you should be laying the foundations for the rest of your Search Engine works.

Laying the Foundations

There are a few things you should consider whilst in the sandbox of any search engine;

• Find your feet – Do the research, set you page themes correctly, set your keywords and descriptions (dont forget the title tags).
• Begin to find links, ask your friends and family… oh and link bait on your blogs if possible.
• Embed analytics into your site… one two even 3 packages … most are free!
• Ensure your pages have a nice structure, … heading, sub head, paragraph and so on.
• Ensure your site is validating.
• Ensure all pages on your site have at least one link from somewhere else on your site.
• If possible create a sitemap (xml) and submit it to search engines.

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Now… I’ve neglected design for a while, focused on the “development” of existing sites. And its not just me that has been doing this, and there is a valid reason… there is less money in web design & development so less people are willing to spend money on a new site when a few changes will make the companies existing site last another year or so.

Anyway with the recession (hopefully) in decline, I wanted to help the designers of the world with some ideas for SEO best practice.

Rule 1 – NEVER Cheat

Think about this… if you walked into a top university (anywhere in the world) where there are hundreds of professors, do you think you could outsmart them all? … if you said “yes” you lied … The answer is and ALWAYS will be NO. And its the same with Google.
Google has rooms all over the world (in the various GooglePlex) full of PHd employees, they write the algorithms which Google run! So you can’t outsmart Google… or any other Search Engine NOW or EVER!

Rule 2 – CONTENT is King

Before you design, get your content right…its not a design users are searching for its information! So this MUST always be top of your list of importance. If your site doesn’t have information people want they won’t visit.
Think of your information layout being a pyramid…. start with the H1 tag and have your first paragraph explain the rest of your pages content. Then move down with more heading tags.
See my post on making Copy your Salesman

Rule 3 – STICK with Your Keywords

When you are defining a site with a client ask them for their themes… these should (in theory) become your keywords/phrases. Stick to them like glue … each page should be themed independantly but this should change on a regular basis… doing so will make a search engine “shifty” and may cause a search engine not to trust you.

Rule 4 – CLEAN code is Searchable Code

Using clean “semantic” code does not mean you are a professional…it simply means that both humans and search engines can access your pages more easily… oh and it makes your site a damn site more accessible.
So use H-tags, P tags, UL / OL and LI tags …blockquote and em (for italics) oh and strong (for bolder text).
Also don’t overuse DIV tags.
By keeping your code semantic, using semantic elements you can use CSS (externally) to style your site and make it look how you want.

Rule 5 – NAVIGATION for All

I will keep it simple… Navigation is key, place your main navigation where you’d expect to see it… top of the page or on the left … follow the “unwritten rules of design” … make sure both your navigation and other links have meaningful anchor text. This means don’t use “click here” or “see more” as links. Further to this avoid flash for navigation … use clean code… more info can be found in my perfect seo navigation article.

Rule 6 – TITLE are the winners

Ok … meta tags do some of the work (in theory), and the content does the rest right???
Wrong! you forget what is easily one of the most important factors on a site…the title tag. Think about this next time you are coding a page or writing its content… when you search on any search engine how often do you look at the description? not very is my bet. I bet you like over 95% of other search engine users only look at the titles of the search results. So use your title tag to make an impact!

Rule 7 – ALTERNATIVE text / tags

You are a blind user, you visit a site full of images (a picture speaks a thousand words), these images explain the content a little better but you can’t see them… and they don’t have an alternative text nor a caption… they are useless to you and now the site makes no sense.
With this in mind next time you have an image or graphic..or flash file that explains anything make sure you give a text alternative… oh I almost forgot a search engine won’t view your images like a human (it sweeps for content and images separately for its indexing, it doesn’t relate them.) So alternative tags will help your SEO efforts.

Rule 8 – DESIGN friendly URLs

Whether dynamic or not, all sites should have SEO / User friendly url’s this means not having /p?=1234?34 or anything like this but rather /real-seo as a url following the domain. There are several ways to do this, some CMS systems (like wordpress) will automatically do this for you, alternatively you can use a .htaccess file or hard-code the file names. … Get to know about the 10 rules of perfect urls.

Rule 9 – SITEMAPs … both human and robots can read

Often overlooked by designers and developers alike the Sitemap. Ok, it can be forgiven for a site not to have a human readable sitemap… you don’t always need one for humans! you navigation should do the job for you. However you MUST create a sitemap for search engines and other web programs … there are any number of sitemap generator tools around for you to try. … once you get a sitemap submit it to the search engines as well as have it in your main directory.

Rule 10 – RULES are only Rules if you break them

Most SEO’s will hate me for this (and i know i am in for a nasty time when this is published) most of the above will stand good for many years, but everything changes… so don’t trust what you read on every SEO website. If you break a rule above that is fine…just try not too…google won’t penalise you for most of them… though cheating or being black-hat may see you being in trouble and having a need to explain yourself.

This is just a short post to let you guys know google is out of beta!

Well GMAIL, DOCS, Apps etc are …

The reason behind this is not as you may think due to some amazing updates to code, or for any reason related to this…. but rather google want to appeal to more businesses…. but hang on I ask google is appreciated the world over and used by many many millions and thousands (hundreds of) companies…so I ask what the real reason is…are google caving to the pressure of exisiting clients… or maybe they are looking for some kind of good news because of everything that has happened in china recently…???

whats you view?

- read the google blog post here

I am always going on in my articles about how “Content is King” and that “SEO is a Journey, Not a Destination”. However, recently i’ve come to be harassed by a certain SEO issue… The Content To Sh*t (CTS) Ratio!

CTS can be explained quite simply. CTS is the ratio of real “meaningful” content to coding crap (which yes does all the work on the site but does nothing for SEO!).

Over the past few weeks I have seen sites with ratios as low as 0.001% and as high as 100% (admittedly the later was myself testing the theory). Oh and I should also add here that if you site is only flash – with no alternative content – then you can end up with a negative ratio, generally this means you are seriously going to struggle to get any kind of search ranking.

Neither of these two extreme situations will be good for Search Engine Optimisation. So ‘what is the Golden Ration?’ Well in truth there is no single number that is the magic that means your site will gain higher search rankings than your competitors. There is however an ideal range, an adequate range and a meh it’s ok range.

The Ranges:
Meh it’s ok – this is between 2 and 5 % …. and 20 to 25%.
Adequate – this is between 5 and 7 % …. and 13 to 19%.
Ideal – this is between 8 and 12%.

Now measuring the CTS is not a science, which explains why these ranges are quite broad. However, the theory behind it is proven by my own testing & from case studies I have read (i will post links to these in my next post).

The method to cut down this rubbish fairly simple.

• If you can externalise sections of code, do so!
  This means PHP/JavaScript/CSS